Bill, The Galactic Hero 6 - on the Planet Of The Hippies From Hell (13 page)

“A bridge could be across a river, too,” Bill muttered darkly, still not sure just what the hell was happening.

“I feel that I must warn you though,” warned Bob. “The captain's really a bit loony. Gone clear out of his mind, if you ask me. It takes one to know one and I know one not one neck away from me. But we moo-tated moo-tineers, we've learned our lessons. We just do our menial jobs, try to forget the past, go to church on Sunday, no more wanking on the planking — and we keep our noses clean. Which is especially hard when you've got two noses, right Bill?”

“Dat's right, Bob. Whatever you said. It's dem long words again, like 'I' and 'me.'”

“Let's get to it then, huh,” Elliot muttered impatiently. “But first ... is there any chance that we can get a look at that sun? I find it most intriguing — not to say impossible inside a spaceship.”

“The sun? Sure thing! The solar footplate engineer, he's a good buddy of mine!”

“What kind of engineer did you say?”

“Ah, come on ... I'll show you exactly what I mean.” The two headed moo-tant gestured.

Bill and Elliot followed the shambling figure down the long, curved corridor. After a long and tiring walk, they reached a door that squeaked open when Bill-Bob grabbed the handle, put his weight upon it and hauled. They all stepped through.

Bill had seen some remarkable not to say interesting things in his life, but this took the brass battleship.

Bill-Bob, Elliot and Bill stood upon a ramshackle metal platform a few feet above a chintzy tinfoil and papier-mache surface that stretched to the horizon. Painted blue, with rust and rivets showing through in places. It didn't make sense. Train tracks stretched out across it. Bill jumped down, walked along the tracks a bit — then looked up.

And dropped, whinnying with terror, fingers clamped to the tracks. For above him was the desert, the rocks, the Indians. And he was falling toward them!

“Falling! This is the end!” he screeched.

“Knock it off, cretin!” Elliot sneered, walking over and standing beside him, bending to pull his clamped fingers loose from the rail. “You're not going to fall — even though you are standing on the sky....”

“You think that makes it any better!”

“Look, dummy — am I falling? Or our two-headed guide? We're inside a hollow spaceship, that's all. Which is spinning in space so everything is held to the inside by centrifugal force. You have heard of centrifugal force, haven't you?”

“Yes — but I forget.”

“Educational standards are not what they should be. Look — what happens if you fill a pail of water, tie a rope to it and swing it around your head?”

“I get wet?” Bill said hopefully.

“Yes — you probably would. But anyone else would swing it fast enough in a circle so the water wouldn't come out —”

“Thar she blows!” the two-headed janitor shouted.

The sun was coming toward them across the sky-ground, accompanied by a distant tooting. As it came closer the sun grew dimmer and they could see a dilapidated steam engine on the track ahead of it.

“Casey! Casey!” the moo-tant hailed.

“Yo, Bill-Bob! How they hanging?” said the man in the cab of the engine as it approached. He pulled a cord attached to a steam whistle, and the whistle blew like a lost and hopeless soul dropping down through the void into purgatory. Or something like that. Then the engine went through a cloud and they saw the special effects generators that hummed and cranked, projecting cloud images onto the sky, weaving out their webs of cheesy cinematic magic upon the unsuspecting tribes of warped Indians on the desert below.

But the most incredible sight was still the old-fashioned steam-engine train on rusty steel railroad tracks, struggling to drag the weight of a fusion-generated sun across the “sky.”

“Wow!” enthused Elliot. “Talk about Apollo and his chariot! This baby has the old myths beat by a mile.”

“Wuzzat?” said Bill.

“Never mind. Mythic allusion beyond your education and/or intelligence, Bill.”

Still, it was quite a sight, a railroad train hauling a sun across a fake sky. And Bill now could see why the sun had been wobbling so much — the track was clearly old and dilapidated, and if the sun and the train were not tilting and shifting preciously all over the place, the track itself was. Bill, peering down at the sight from his vantage point, got nauseous just observing this twisted parody of nature.

“Astonishing, wouldn't you say, Bill?” Elliot observed. “You see what I mean? That's a whole captive universe down there.”

Bill looked dubious. “More like a giant sandbox!”

“That's Casey Moo-Jones, the artificial sun engineer. Casey, these guys say they're time-travelers who've come here by mistake!”

The big, red-faced man spit out a stream of tobacco juice, then bit into a chunk of tobacco and chomped, eyeing the newcomers. “Why'd anyone want to come here, 'cept by mistake?”

“Can you tell us something about how this place got to be like this?” asked Elliot.

“Damned if I know. How come I got three thumbs?” The engineer held up his blackened digits in triple illustration.

“Because you're a moo-tation, Casey!” Bob laughed.

“Holy Cow! That's right. Well, 'scuse me guys, but ole Betsy here's acting up again, and I got aways to go before I hit sundown and can turn her off.” He pointed over to the edge of the cheap theatrical panorama. “Then I gotta haul this dilapidated old thing around the ridge track and set her up for tomorrow's run. Whew — what a grind!”

“Well, Casey,” said Bob, “we all know that you can do it. Haven't missed a day yet, except one or two when you ran out of coal, but we all enjoyed the extra night's sleep. Except the Indians of course. See you.”

“I hope so — just as long as the old sun keeps on rolling along! Now you better take these newcomers up and introduce them to the captain. Remember to watch out for the bad moo-tations though, fellows. Well, gotta get moo-ving! Ain't no milk run, I'll tell you that. Har har.”

The two — no, three moo-tants laughed at this bovine humor; then Casey Moo-Jones pushed on the creaky mechanical throttle and it ground and hissed steam and chugged forward, dragging its bright, glowing baggage behind it.

“How instructive — no wonder you people mutate!” said Elliot. “That sun looks dangerously radioactive.”

“The sun?” Bob waved away the notion. “Naw. You should see the breeder reactor that powers this boat. You could grill an entire herd of cattle on it!”

“Blas-phem-y!” moaned the moo-Bill.

“Oh, that's right,” said moo-Bob. “We don't eat hamburgers or steaks or any beef on this vessel, 'cos of the offense given to the Holy Cow, praises be to Her Holy Udders!”

“Religious discussions later,” Elliot broke in. “That bridge you mentioned. You'll take us there next, right?”

“Oh yes, no problem.”

“But Bob,” said moo-Bill. “Uh, you remember what happened last time!”

“Don't worry about it, brother! All you have to do is keep your mouth shut! You think you can go for an hour without saying anything stupid?”

“Duh — can I say something smart?”

“Let's not risk your judgment. Just keep your trap shut, okey doke? We don't want to hear nothing like 'generation ship.'”

“Okey doke!”

The moo-tant clamped his teeth tightly shut.

“What's this captain you've been talking about?” asked Elliot.

“You'll see.”

“You think I can use his radio? Maybe I can patch it to communicate with my superiors!” Elliot looked hopeful.

“You're going to have to talk to the captain about that first,” said moo-Bob. “Let's go. Hey, brother. This is sure a heck of a lot better than broom duty, huh?”

“Mmmmmmph!” said moo-Bill, unable to say much with his mouth closed.

On the way down the musty, dusty corridors two things occurred to Bill.

One was that he sure would like a drink.

The other was that he hadn't the faintest idea of what their two-headed guide was talking about. What was a generation ship anyway?

“What's a generation ship?” he asked Elliot as they tagged along behind the happy custodial moo-tant on the way to the fabled bridge. “Is it like maybe a ship's electricity generator?”

“Boy!” said moo-Bob. “This guy's dopier than my brother!”

“Hmmmmmph!” said moo-Bill emphatically.

“No, Bill. That's 'generator.' This is 'generation.' You know, like a lot of people descended from each other. Each one's a generation.”

“What about it then?” Bill muttered, still unaware. “I know what a generation is. What's it got to do with a ship?”

“Listen and learn, oh school dropout. Generation ships, well, they're a part of ancient Earth history, while there was still an Earth to have a history about. Which you would have known if you had not cut so many classes.”

“Earth. I'm up on that. Inventors of beer, wine and distilled spirits!”

“And home of the Original Holy Cow!” said moo-Bob.

“Well, I suppose we'll hear about that later, won't we?” said Elliot. “But for right now, I think I'd better answer Bill's question. You know, Bill, there weren't always faster than light starship drives, and bloater drives and such. There wasn't even space travel. In fact, as no doubt you can surmise from our experience down in that captive universe of the American Southwest, people used to ride around on horses. Can't get from planet to planet or from star to star very well on a horse, now can you?”

Elliot went on to explain, in boring detail, how when human science believed what Einstein's Theory of Relativity said about matter not being able to travel past the speed of light, yearning hearts and minds nonetheless desired to travel out to settle the stars in their restless urge for progress, conquest, and bigger, better wars. That's when some fascistic moron came up with the ridiculous idea of imprisoning people in a big spaceship and shooting them out toward the stars. Where, just possibly, the surviving remote descendants of the long-dead first crew might reach and settle distant planets.

This highly dubious concept encouraged other scientists to suggest that, the basics of human need thus satisfied, an entire colony could travel through space for the years necessary to arrive at neighboring solar systems. True, it would take many generations of human civilization to arrive at their destination, but with all the comforts of home, how could people refuse? They tried to, not being enamored of being shot off on a one-way trip, but isn't that what MPs and the draft and press gangs are for? Manacled and weeping, the “volunteers” of the first generation ships were dispatched from Earth.

Unfortunately, two factors intruded.

The first was that no sooner had the first batch of generation ships been dispatched, than all the various sorts of FTL drives began to be discovered. Mankind gradually forgot all about these space-faring closed societies traveling to such spots as Alpha, Beta and Proxima Centauri.

The second was that as things got old and fell apart on these ships, they couldn't be fixed or replaced. So civilization aboard most of these ships degenerated to savagery. The highly complex technology was forgotten and the piloting systems went kafluey, driving the whole works off course and into oblivion.

Such was clearly the case with this particular generation ship.

“But what about the captive universe?” asked Bill. “Why would anybody put a desert aboard a starship?”

“Clearly, Bill, because someone had foreseen the possibility of civilization degenerating thusly. Therefore, why not import an artificial civilization modeled on an older self-sufficient people, keep them chained to confining belief systems and then, when they made it to another world, reeducate them? Certainly a concept that might see that at least a couple of ships made it to those distant worlds.”

Yes. Bill had to admit that he could definitely see the case for this argument.

“That takes care of the Indians all right,” Bill said. “But where do these mutants come from?”

“I have a feeling we are going to find out very soon. You heard the word mutiny. Maybe they took over from the original leaders — mutinied — and started piloting the generation ship.”

“But toward where?”

“That's what we're going to have to find out.”

“On the bridge?”

“I see you are beginning to think — even though it is still an effort. So we're off to see this captain — and maybe even this Holy Cow ... the resident deity, it would seem.”

As they talked, they had traveled along the musty dusty corridors, dimly lit by grimy 15-watt bulbs, half of them burnt out. Now as they turned to follow another corridor, Bill noticed a porthole through which tiny bright lights peered and twinkled.

“Stars!” said Bill.

“No,” said moo-Bill. “That's just the Holy Firefly collection. We tech folk aren't allowed to look at stars. Only the Udderly Holy Cow Monks can gaze upon the bright fury of the stars!”

“They're just these bright lights in space, that's all,” shrugged Bill. “No big deal.”

“Let's not fumble with sacrilege, Bill,” suggested Elliot. “Stars are gods to some people!”

“Gods, shmods!” said moo-Bill. “Da stars dey just big shiny Holy Cow droppings!”

His brother slapped him sharply and immediately across his forehead. “I told you to keep your mouth shut, dammit!”

The dumber pair of the moo-tant twins looked infinitely chagrined. “Oop!” And he promptly clenched his teeth shut again, putting their mutual hands over his mouth.

The two-headed moo-tant led them on down the hallway, which opened into a large balcony overlooking a large deserted open area with doors and corridors leading from it.

“Hey — what's in there?” asked Bill, pointing toward a bank of refrigerator windows.

“Take a guess,” said Bill-Bob.

“Booze!” said Bill, getting excited.

“Mmmmph!” said moo-Bill, looking even more excited than Bill, but refraining from speaking.

Moo-Bob looked very pleased with himself. “No. Guess again?”

“People in suspended animation?” suggested Elliot, honestly puzzled.

“Nope!” said moo-Bob. “Dairy products!”

“Dairy products?” gasped Elliot, aghast.

“Got any fermented yak milk?” queried Bill, quickly sifting through the alcoholic possibilities.